Contract Opportunities (SAM.gov)

What is Contract Opportunities?

Contract Opportunities is the federal government's official, free point of entry for finding posted federal contract opportunities. It lives within SAM.gov and is where contracting officers publish synopses and solicitations — including presolicitation notices, combined synopsis/solicitations, sources-sought notices, and award notices. It replaced the legacy FedBizOpps (FBO) system, which was retired and folded into SAM.gov.

Generally, proposed contract actions expected to exceed the simplified acquisition threshold must be publicized here, and many actions between the micro-purchase threshold and the SAT are posted as well, subject to the FAR's publicizing rules (FAR Part 5). Each posting carries structured data — NAICS code, set-aside type, place of performance, response deadline, and attachments — that vendors use to filter and qualify opportunities.

For vendors, Contract Opportunities is the primary discovery channel for active federal solicitations and a key signal source: sources-sought and presolicitation notices reveal upcoming requirements early, while award notices show who won. Setting up saved searches by NAICS and set-aside type, and monitoring early-stage notices, is the baseline federal-pipeline workflow — and the value-add of aggregators is layering search, alerts, and analytics on top of this public data.